So this meant for me eight francs per night instead of six;—exactly double, this time, what my office work brought me in.
La Noce et l'Enterrement was played on 21 November 1826. My mother and I saw my play from the orchestra. As my name did not transpire, and as I was totally unknown, I experienced no inconvenience from allowing myself the satisfaction of being present. The play succeeded admirably; but, even as the Roman emperors, in their days of triumph, were reminded by a slave that they were mortal, so, lest my success should intoxicate me, Providence placed a neighbour on my left who remarked, as he rose at the fall of the curtain—
"Come, come, it isn't such stuff as this that will uphold the theatre."
My neighbour was right, and he knew what he was talking about all the more in that he was a fellow-writer.
The play was acted some forty times, and, as Porcher generously left me half my rights, claiming only the remaining half to liquidate previous advances, the four francs per night that I received from the tickets helped us to get over the winter of 1826 to 1827.
[CHAPTER V]
Soulié at the mechanical saw-mill—His platonic love of gold—I desire to write a drama with him—I translate Fiesque—Death of Auguste Lafarge—My pay is increased and my position lowered—Félix Deviolaine, condemned by the medical faculty, is saved by illness—Louis XI. à Péronne—Talma's theatrical wardrobe—The loi de justice et d'amour—The disbanding of the National Guard